Contact center agents can get more done if they don’t waste time doing this every day.
Agents spend about 11% of their time every day waiting — for a call, an email, information or instructions from the boss, according to John Wolf, Chief Operating Officer at Knowlagent.
Unfortunately, it’s not one big chunk of time. Instead, most down time is spent in two to two-and-a-half breaks in work action, Wolf found.
So how can contact center leaders take advantage of those little breaks? Don’t try to use them to refresh. It’s not enough time, Wolf warns. (That’s best done in 15-minute or more breaks.)
Better ideas:
- Train. Many companies like Knowlagent can create online, in-house training nuggets for agents to study in their brief breaks.
- Fix up. Encourage agents to use the short bursts of down-time to clean out their desks and files weekly.
- Follow up. Check on the status of a situation and email the customer who’s waiting for that status update.
- Thank customers. It only takes about two minutes to write a short thank you note and address it. Keep a stack of note cards handy to do this regularly.
